'No one is alone': Read what the judge and victims said at Danny Masterson's sentencing
Discover more from Legal Affairs and Trials with Meghann Cuniff
'No one is alone': Read what the judge and victims said at Danny Masterson's sentencing
One victim said her statement is 'for any rape or sexual assault victim anywhere who finds some kinship in my story, no matter how slight.'
Before a judge last week sentenced actor Danny Masterson to 30 years to life in prison for raping two women in 2003, his victims spoke about how the crimes ravaged their lives.
Niesha Trout and then Jen B. each read a statement aloud at the lectern in front of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo as Masterson sat at the defense table.
Before Trout spoke, Deputy District Attorney Ariel Anson read aloud a written statement from Chrissie Carnell-Bixler, Masterson’s former girlfriend. Jurors in May deadlocked 8-4 in favor of guilty on Masterson’s forcible rape charge related to Carnell-Bixler, but Judge Olmedo allowed her to give a victim impact statement under the victims’ rights law Marsy’s Law.
Olmedo did not allow a statement from a woman who was not a charged victim but testified that Masterson raped her in Toronto in 2001 when he was filming Dracula 2000. The woman attended the sentencing and sat with the other victims.
Masterson, who was Steven Hyde on That ‘70s Show and Jameson “Rooster” Bennett on The Ranch, declined to speak.
Judge Olmedo then said, “Before I impose sentence, I do want to say a few words.”
Masterson’s lawyers had asked her to sentence him to 15 years to life for both rapes instead of 30 years, but Olmedo, a former assistant U.S. attorney, said she didn’t believe she had discretion to do so and even if she did, “I would choose not to do so here.”
“Not only has Masterson been convicted of two forcible rapes with a true finding of multiple victims, the rapes themselves involve separate incidence of force used on different women occurring on different dates and under different circumstances,” said Olmedo, a Loyola Law School graduate and 2002 Gov. Gray Davis appointee.
Here are the judge’s verbatim remarks and the verbatim victim impact statements, via the court reporter’s certified transcript.
Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo
“Mr. Masterson, I know that you’re sitting here steadfast in your claims of innocence and, thus, no doubt feeling victimized by a justice system that you feel has failed you. And I’m sure you’re asking yourself how you can be convicted of a each charge of a sexual incident occurring 20 years ago based on the testimony of a woman that you believe is disgruntled and has a vendetta against you.
But you were not convicted of the testimony on one person, although the testimony of one person is sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction. And you were not convicted based upon rumors, innuendo, gossip, or speculation.
You were convicted based upon the testimony and evidence that 12 people from the community found to be credible. You were convicted because the victims testifieda bout what occurred back in 2001 and 2003.
You were convicted because each of the victims reported the rapes to someone shortly after the rapes occurred, also back in 2001 and 2003.
Jane Doe 2 told her mother and friends; thus reporting the rape. Jane Doe 1 reported the rape to Scientology officials and also wrote letters to Scientology’s International Justice Chief reporting the rape.
They also reported the rape to Los Angeles Police Department almost, approximately a year later. And Jane Doe 3 reported the rape to Scientology ethics officers and higher officials within the Scientology organization shortly after the rape.
In addition, shortly after the rape, you paid Jane Doe 1 approximately $400,000 to keep quiet about the charged sexual incident. And while some may argue that whether you believed her story was true or not, you just didn’t want the bad publicity, she was seeking money from you, close to half a million dollars is an awful lot to pay for the silence about an incident that you claimed never happened.
The events as relayed by the victims were similar to each other. And during the time that victims told other people about the rapes shortly after the rapes had occurred, the victims were still Scientologists. They had not left the organization yet.
So the argument that they only colluded with each other decades later after leaving Scientology to get money from you does not make sense in light of their earlier reporting, nor does it diminish the truth or impact of the earlier statements made at or near the time of the rapes when they had no motive to life, retaliate or gain money.
In addition to what I have just mentioned, there was further testimony and evidence presented at trial And after hearing all of the evidence, the jury from the community found you guilty of counts 1 and 2 by proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Mr. Masterson, you are not the victim here. Your actions 20 years ago took away another person’s voice and choice. Your actions 20 years ago were criminal, and that is why you are here.
Ultimately, one way or another, you will have to come to terms with both your prior actions and the subsequent consequences. To quote Martin Luther King, quote, the ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
As to count 1, a violation of penal code section 261 (A)(2) of the penal code, I order Mr. Masterson to be imprisoned in state prison for a term of 15 years to life.
As to count 2, also a violation of penal code section 261 (A)(2), I order Mr. Masterson to be imprisoned for a term of 15 years to life. I order the sentences to run consecutive.
The total sentence is 30 years to life with actual conduct, I’m sorry, with actual custody credit of 100 days and conduct credit of 15 days for a total credit of 115 days.”
Note: Carnell-Bixler and Trout have publicly identified themselves under their full names, but victim Jen B. has not.
Chrissie Carnell-Bixler (Jane Doe 3)
“Dear Honorable Judge Olmedo,
Before I begin, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me the freedom of choice to use my voice today. You will never know how much this means to me, and my hope is that it helps me in my healing.
Thank you, Your Honor. I understand that, for many, it’s difficult to believe that anyone would stay in a relationship with the one like the one I was in with Danny Masterson.
That difficulty was at the forefront of my mind when I spoke to detectives, it was at the forefront of my mind when I spoke to the prosecutors and it’s at the forefront of my mind as I stand here today.
How can I tell anyone that I had I gotten myself into a situation where I was regularly mentally and emotionally abused and raped repeatedly?
That’s partly why I focused on the one rape that I reported to Scientology. Certainly, I answered every question that was asked of me by the detectives to the best of my ability.
However, there was one question that I wished I had been asked that I never was, one question that perhaps would make people understand. And the question I needed someone — anyone to ask me was, ‘Why did you hide from Danny Masterson for over two hours in your roommate’s bedroom the day after he came to your house party?’
Because there was a reason, and Mr. Masterson knows that reason. He always has. And I know the reason for why I ultimately ignored my intuition and forced myself to view what he did to me not actually as it was. Because Mr. Masterson was very charming, so charming, in fact, he convinced my roommates that, perhaps, what he had done to me the night before wasn’t so bad.
After he left — after waiting the two hours while I hid — my roommates told me, ‘How sweet is he?· How romantic is it that this poor guy waited for you for over two hours? Who does this? Give him a chance. Apologize to him. And so I abandoned my intuition and did just that. When he called me, I apologized to him and accepted a date. Two weeks later, I moved in with him.
I was ordered to no longer be friends with my roommates and my friend who was present that night, the night he first sexually assaulted me. The very act that made me fear him and hide, the very thing that I forced myself to view not as it actually was.
For now I saw him as someone who loved me, someone I trusted, someone I quickly loved back. I entered that relationship an 18-year-old girl with very little life experience. I was extremely naive and trusting. I entered that relationship with friends, family, a career, money and dreams. Within a short period, I was stripped of every friend I knew, my family, my job and a belief that my dreams could never be realized because I trusted him.
I believed him when he called me stupid, untalented, embarrassing trash. I believed him, but I never stopped trying to make him proud of me. I never stopped trying to think of ways to earn his kindness. When he was kind to me, it gave me hope. It gave me promise that maybe if I can just endure what I cannot forgive now that maybe he could turn return to the person he showed me at the beginning of our relationship.
I now know that — I know that — excuse me. I know that was his game: the cycle of abuse. He’d hurt me. He’d ignore me. I’d grovel at his feet apologizing to him for what he did to hurt me, then he’d show me kindness. It’s incredibly difficult for me to talk about the trauma and abuse I’ve experienced in my life. I have realized through the last few years that the reason is Danny Masterson.
Early on in our relationship, Mr. Masterson would ask me about certain traumatic things that happened to me. He wanted all the details. In Scientology, it’s called finding a person’s ruins. Mr. Masterson wanted to know anything and everything that I believed had ever ruined me. Later, once I got good and trapped, he would reenact those traumatic experiences on me.
To speak of the impact of rape for me is viewing my body as a crime scene my entire life and never being able to call out for help out of fear and shame and not wanting people to see me the way I see me:· broken, deformed.
When you’re raped, it’s not your surface that’s the most defiled. It damages you on cellular level. I honestly still don’t even have the words to properly describe what being raped does to you. I just know the symptoms. I’ve suffered insomnia. I would oftentimes stay awake for 24-hour periods. I hate the dark.
I cannot sleep next to anyone, not even my husband, my sweet husband. I don’t know what I did to deserve such a good and decent and gentle man, always patient and never questioning. He’s never, in 14 years of marriage, ever made me think he would harm me in any way. Yet, I cannot sleep in bed next to him.
I harm myself in my sleep. I regularly wake up with deep bruises and scratches on my hands and arms. In 2017, I punched a hole in the wall behind my bed during my sleep.· I’m always fighting monsters. In 2016, after finding out I wasn’t the only victim, I had my first panic attack. I went to the emergency room because I thought I was dying.
I remember forcing them to run all these tests. The doctor came back and told me that — told me this is one of the worst panic attacks he had ever witnessed. He told me I needed to take a pill. I remember sitting there on oxygen and still not being able to breathe with my heart beating out of my chest. And I told the doctor that I couldn’t take psychiatric medication because Scientology believed psychiatric — psychiatry is the root cause of all evil.
The doctor told me I had to take the pill. I took it, and 20 minutes later, my symptoms went away. I could breathe. I wasn’t having a heart attack. I wasn’t dying. I had my first panic attack.
After reporting Mr. Masterson to law enforcement, me and my family started being Fair Gamed by Scientology just as they had threatened they would back in 2002.
I had been diagnosed with PTSD, general anxiety and panic disorder. I have also developed severe trichotillomania. I haven’t been diagnosed agoraphobic, but I can count on two hands the amount of times I’ve left my home in the last few years.
I have physical health issues. I throw up. I started getting blinding migraines accompanied by visual auras. I go through phases where I have severe body pains like my nerves and part of my body are on fire.
This and so much more is the life sentence Mr. Masterson and Scientology have given me.”
Niesha Trout (Jane Doe 2)
“Thank you, Your Honor, for giving me the opportunity to be heard hear today. I am deeply appreciative for the privilege.
I struggled in writing this for a lot of reasons. Mainly, it makes me feel exhibited in ways I am loathe to, but also because I didn’t want to have this public account of my private and abject pain be mistaken for concerning myself on any level with what my rapist or the adamantly lying defense things or feels about what’s happened to me, because I don’t.
I say all of this for myself, for my family, for my dearest friends, for my sister survivors and for all of Danny’s victims who were not heard and for any rape or sexual assault victim anywhere who finds some kinship in my story, no matter how slight. No one is alone.
Danny, the day you were convicted, my mom came over to take me to dinner in a part of the town, a little part of town where I’ve lived for two decades that has often felt a little dangerous for me, a part of the town that you and your army hold as a kind of territory.
I hadn’t really felt allowed to be over there without some amount of vigilance. And as we ate our food, I quietly began to feel lighter. I started to feel soft. I told my mom, “Something has shifted. Something I’ve been so used to carrying was falling away or hissing slowly out of me like air from a tire.”
I described that old, bad feeling as a dense cube or jagged stone of fear and shame lodged inside my chest that turned on a terrible axis in me that snagged persistently at my life force. Now, all at onece, this stone was leaving me.
I didn’t entirely understand it at the time. But that stone was you, Danny. Now. just to walk around town freely that I’ve lived in for years without the lingering anxiety of seeing you or your minions meant I was no longer in your proxy, that I don’t have to carry your shame around with me anymore.
And now, you have to carry it. You have to sit in a cell and hold it. It was always your shame anyway, Danny. Now you will come to see how heavy it is.
Without it, I might have the possibility of healing, but healing is not some linear, simple thing. The lasting effects of rape are pernicious as they hack silently away at the daily efforts one tried to make toward a life with meaning.
Do not confuse it. Even though it was so long ago, what you did to me by emotionally, mentally, and physically injuring me in this brutal manner still reverberates and lives on in my body as corporeal pain. The body is a relentless witness. I still have to contend with what you did to me that night, to take a life’s worth of therapy of repair because every time I think I’m OK, that rape comes back to throw that night around me, around in me as actual physical pain to say Hi, you’re not done with me yet.
Still, for 13 years I was resigned and outright to deny to myself, blame myself or try and forget it and move on but always sure to never seek justice.
I knew seeking it came with its own dire consequences by both society and especially by your enabler and protector Scientology, of which I had ben a brainwashed member for seven years at the time of the sexual assault.
Scientology, who knew you had been raping its members but made concerted efforts to not only punish your victims for being assaulted by you but to cover up all the rapes leading to even more victims made by you.
In late 2016, a year before the MeToo movement ever began and more than a decade of having been out of the cult, I fount out, for the first time, there were other victims of yours, something that had never once occurred to me.
And I was horrified, enraged and then I could not let it go. I could not sit with this secret and tough it out, knowing you’d strike again, knowing the danger women were in and that many others needed justice too. In my heart, I had no choice but to come forward.
And because of already having been threatened with Scientology’s strict policies against reporting members to law enforcement and deliberately being shown their extensive policies in exacting ruinous punishment on defectors who speak out against its prized members, I decided to report my rape to law enforcement anyway, with the full understanding that my life could be demolished again in a new way for doing so.
Like clockwork, since the week I came forward to police, I have been terrorized, harassed and had my privacy invaded daily by the cult of Scientology for almost seven years now. But I don’t regret it.
Being a truthful, sturdy person is its own reward. You wouldn’t know. When you raped me, you stole from me. That is what rape is. A theft of the sprit.
You disfigured my life. You stole some crucial pieces of my self-worth and lessened my capacity for joy. You made every part of me turn on myself, worst of all, for so many years afterwards.
The rape deformed my capacity to trust others and warped my ability to discern danger or goodness appropriately since life was now in the more active prison of hatred, shame and fear you forced into me that night.
And you were someone in my community who I peripherally knew that my close friends vouched for. Danny is a great guy, they said.
This stolen trust part is the most crippling because now my internal gauge was broken. Whatever condition it was in before, you broke it completely. Think of trust like a gas tank light in a car. Mine doesn’t work at all now.
After the rape, I get into my life and start moving, but I couldn’t tell what was going on in my interactions in terms of security or distance. I didn’t know how far to protect myself. So I over- or underdid it to the point of it breaking down all the time.
That made life, which is, at its core, about connection of all kinds, untenable. Try, if you’re brave enough at all, to truly see the scope of what you’ve done.
See how it fractures a life. See it. Own it. I can assure you, that where you’re going all of your mechanisms for safety will be firing off at all times.
When you raped me, you stole my ability to create any sort of real stability in my life in innumerable ways for well over a decade, Danny. My relationships with boyfriends, family, friends were increasingly fraught and suffered from the distortion this event made of me. I had to go into such denial to survive it. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me.
I became increasingly vexed and unstable. My promising acting career, which had been ascending nicely at the time, nosedived within a couple months after the rape. My career never recovered and ended shortly thereafter.
My life became cut with an invisible tension that made no sense to anyone around me. No one and nowhere felt safe. In hurting me this way, you also hurt the people who love me because everything is delicately connected.
But you will likely never have the courage it takes to see how your actions affect other people. Your heinous attack on me snuck its way through my body and my experiences, so stealthily high-jacking the life I was building diligently for myself.
I have severe PTSD, reoccurring panic attacks and waves of debilitating depression. It’s true, I did have anxiety and insecurities before the rape. But I was still thriving, working and existing with a sense of normality. After you raped me, I stopped living and was in full-blown survival mode 24/7.
It is worth noting since I know you take pride in hurting women, you never took my integrity. Nothing and no one ever could.
Hear me, or don’t, when I say: You did this to me and all of your victims intentionally. You wanted my light. You steal women’s radiance. You treated us like we were less than trash, beneath you. But deep down, you coveted precisely those beautiful things in us that you could not find in yourself.
That is why you try to destroy women’s lives with such ferocity and delight. There is no other reason. You do it to fill the gaping abyss within you. Your affliction isn’t interesting. Slap any label on it you want. Your emptiness and cowardice will be your true legacy.
The way rape and many other traumas take shape in human beings, years later, is in the body again or eventually. The mind refuses, but the body knows all. I have severe fibromyalgia that flares up whenever it pleases.
For years, my muscles turn on fiery aching that can last days, weeks or months at a time. More recently an entire year worth of pain was so potent in my legs I could not walk.
Since the rape, my intimacy with men was often riddled with issues and actual, acute stabbing pain that can suddenly reappear from that night by you.
This is a common issue for rape and sexual assault surivivors, psychosomatic pain. That part is by design. That is what you wanted me to feel as you pounded away despite my pleading, like I was subhuman.
It only makes perfect sense that you named yourself “DJ Donkey Punch.” A sex slang term that implies vicious assault as well as a deadly act of rape. You relish in hurting women. It is your addiction.
It is, without question, your favorite thing to do. You lived your life behind a mask as two people, but the real one sits here now for its reckoning. You are pathetic, disturbed and extremely violent and the world is safer with you in prison.
I know you refuse to admit it to yourself, but I am a human being. I absolutely see you as human, Danny. Just missing the compassion or innate decency or any decency.
I’d never want you to be raped or attacked in any way where you’re headed now. I wouldn’t wish rape on my worst enemy. I only wish for the impossible, for you to see yourself with searing clarity, to see all of your actions and sit there with the unassailable deafening truth for as long as it takes to rehabilitate.
I close now to say I have not in any way ruined your life, nor did I put you in prison. None of the incredibly brave, beautiful, strong women you raped who testified here put you in prison. You, all by yourself, made all of the craven, abominable choices that put you squarely in this seat.
It never once dawned on you that you’d be held accountable. You’ve glided easily through your life as a depraved criminal without consequence for so long that you thought, not only the law didn’t apply to you but the karma had no eye on you either.
You move in smugness and spite while the spirity of life itself watches you. You live and breathe without humility or tenderness in the gift of your life that God gave you, that God gives us all.
Life is precious and fragile. Find your heart. Earn something. Read books. Listen to the brightness of nothing and get well. I forgive you. Your sickness is no longer my burden to bear.”
Jen B. (Jane Doe 1)
“Good morning, Your Honor. Thank you for giving us this time today. Thank you for letting me read this and allowing me to hear from my fellow survivors.
Twenty years. I was raped 20 years ago on my father’s 55th birthday, April 25th, 2003. I love my father very much, and I still recall the last time I spoke to him and what he said.
It was August 13th, 2010, my birthday. And he called to wish me happy birthday, and the last thing we said to each other was, “I love you.”
He passed away that weekend. I also recall the last time I heard from my mother and what her last words to me were.
It was February 2020. She texted me and told me to never contact her again. She had warned me ahead of time she wanted to see Danny Masterson brought to justice for raping me but not at the expense of her religion — their religion, Scientology.
She explained clearly in texts that she was coordinating with her Scientology handlers and their legal department and she would happily cooperate and testify here in this court, but Scientology was not to be dragged into it.
She had firm rules, and I had to choose between cooperating fully with law enforcement and the courts or shielding Scientology and keeping my mother in my life.
To my knowledge, my mom is still alive but not in my life because the defendant raped me and I reported him to the police. That is strictly forbidden in Scientology. It is considered a high crime.
And this past nearly seven years after my case was reopened from my 2004 original police report, I fully cooperated in the investigations of the multiple rapes and victims that he was ultimately charged and convicted for.
I have a letter of my mother’s where she wrote to leader of the Church of Scientology, David Miscavige, and demanded justice for me. Even if it was just the Scientology version of it, a different version of justice.
I sometimes read what she wrote back then while I was still in the good graces of Scientology, back when I mattered. She loved me then, I think. She seemed to care what happened to her daughter. I read it sometimes on Mother’s Day or times just to remember how it felt to have a mom.
I didn’t choose to be born into Scientology and their rules, just as I didn’t choose to be raped by Danny Masterson.
I’m going to read a portion slater for a different reason. Unlike the defense’s attempt to have my case dismissed before the trial based on a letter filed in this court from one of Danny’s best friends, a leter that was not signed, was utterly unverifiable, that man had passed away nearly 20 years ago.
This letter that I read — that I will read later was forensically authenticated along with the metadata showing that my mother had written it from her login. This letter was verified as authored and unaltered since March of 2004 when it was written and sent to David Miscavige.
I know this letter was written by her as she showed it to me after she sent it in 2004 so I wouldn’t get in trouble with Scientology for helping her to write it.
I became acquainted with the defendant, Mr. Masterson, through the church that we were both members of, Scientology. I was born into it, and Mr. Masterson and I were what is commonly referred to as second generation Scientologists.
Our families know one another. We attended parties, barbecues at his parents’ house or my parents’ house or his home. We shared mutual friends, many of whom I had to walk by in the hall not just today but at every attempted arraignment, every day of trial.
I’m not going to speak to their behavior. I understand the code in Scientology. I understand the devotion that this celebrity, as he was, can garner in that religion.
We both went to Scientology schools as kids. It was the only community I knew my whole life until I was raped by Mr. Masterson. April 24th, 2003, I worked half a day, picked up my daughter from her school carpool, dropped her off at my parents’ house.
I then packed an overnight bag and went to my friend Brie Shaffer’s house. She was Mr. Masterson’s assistant and also a Scientologist. I got to Brie’s house around 5:00. And sometime after midnight, so April 25th officially, I would end up being raped by her boss.
After being drugged and raped and then waking up, I got dressed. I still don’t recall what I wore out the door, Mr. Cohen. But I do know one thing you didn’t ask me. I never could find my underwear. I know this because when I got home, I didn’t have any on.
And I remember being upset and embarrassed about the idea that my underwear were somewhere at Danny’s house. At some point, I recall making it downstairs that day to the exit of his house to that front patio.
I saw Luke Watson, Danny’s best friend. Luke ordered me to report straight to the Scientology Celebrity Centre International, to Susan. She was both the president of the Celebrity Centre and Luke Watson’s mother. Luke told me that Danny had been to CC that morning. They were expecting me.
Luke wouldn’t speak or help me, even as I begged him. He just kept repeating the demand that I report to the president’s office. I did not comply and, instead, rushed to where I had left my car at Brie’s and then to my parents’ house as fast as I could.
That’s all I could think about. That was my home. I was safe there. My parents were probably very worried. I should have been home hours before.
I remember getting home sometime in the afternoon of April 25th, my dad’s birthday. We had out big annual family trip to celebrate him. That was our tradition, and that entailed my parents flying about 12 of us to Florida to spend the week of his birthday at his favorite hotel.
I recall getting home after Danny’s house an slumping into the first chair I encountered. I was home. I wanted to be safe. I was in a daze. I stared into space for a long time. My mother was in a frenzy. There were about a dozen people, mostly family, coming in and out of the house. I just stared into space.
I managed to get to the airport with my family that night and make our flight. That was a painful five hours as I sat on the plane, my hair still smelling of vomit. And the smell of vomit can remind me of it to this day.
I guess Danny hadn’t been very thorough when he attempted to shower the vomit off of me before raping me. I never even packed my bag for that week-long vacation. And, instead, I wore my mother’s clothes all that week.
Yes, that was her bathing suit I was wearing in the photos that the defense blew up and paraded in front of the jury saying, look at this girl in the bikini with the drink in her hands, smiling. Clearly, she wanted it. Clearly, she is a party girl. Clearly, she wasn’t raped.
Well, in fact, that girl in that photo was wearing her mother’s borrowe bathing suit, drinking an iced coffee and wondering how she was going to hide the fact that she was just raped from her family, that she was just raped by a fellow member of Scientology, the church who proclaims its members to be the most ethical people on the planet.
When we returned back to Los Angeles a week later, I reported what Danny did to me to my church, just as their strict policies demanded and I was trained to do. And I followed this kind of rules and policies my whole life. There are consequences when you don’t.
I reported to a man named Julian. It was very intimidating. He is tall. He sometimes walked around the building with a stick in his hand, and he seemed to take pleasure of reminding me and others why he was allowed to have it and what he was permitted to do with it.
This was the man who decided what I could write or not write and made it very clear Danny was untouchable. And, again, don’t say rape. This man had the power in Scientology. He held the power to expel me, to excommunicate me should he find fit. He made my life hell from that day on. Danny was a celebrity and, therefore, heavily protected from Scientology.
I spent the year following the policies of Scientology and went through everything Danny demanded and our church enforced. A year later and tens of thousands of dollars from my bank accounts paid to Scientology for dozens of hours of interrogations performed by the staff of Scientology.
Then one day in May 2004 — and I’m only, I’m not going to say specifics — I’ll say I was told about a girl named Lily, and it shook mt to my core. And I had to say her name because that’s what I was told, and that’s when I decided to take a stop that would destroy my life.
I knew Danny wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop. So I reported my rape to LAPD in June of 2004. But before that, there was a meeting I was to attend with my rapist.
As Danny demanded in April 2004, I was forced by Scientology executive Kirsten Caetano to sit across from him in a meeting at a conference tabel where he claimed he would apologize and make a promise to never repeat such a crime on any woman if he would just hear me describe in detail how awful and violent the assault had been for me.
I naively believed in the possibility of redemption, and I agreed to speak about the whole ordeal. However, it soon became clear this wasn’t real. The defendant, along with his friend Luke Watson, turned the meeting into a mockery.
They laughed and treated the situation as a big joke, showing no genuine remorse with no intention to change. It was heart-breaking, the realization tht the defendant’s callousness and lack of empathy and everything I said made no difference.
What makes this situation even more distressing is the defendant’s refusal to acknowledge the gravity of his actions, not just to me but to so many. He’s not shown an ounce of remorse for the pain he caused me.
Instead, he chose to laugh at my suffering and the horrors I told him about. To compound matters, he utilized our shared faith, our community, our religion as a means to cover up his crime and silence me.
It’s deeply troubling that an institution of faith which should stand for justice and compassion was manipulated to shield a perpetrator from accountability. The second time he laughed at me in that final meeting as I was describing reaching towards the nightstand, I still remember him laughing and saying he was afraid I might knock over the lamp on his nightstand and he loved that lamp.
I told Kirsten the meeting was over. I’m sorry. Yeah. I saw, I saw the defndant when Jane Doe 2 was speaking. I looked over. I knew her pain, and I knew what she was looking at and what was looking at her.
I, I’ve, OK. I knew he belonged behind bars for the safety of all women. And I’m so sorry because, why I am so upset is that I spent a year doing what I did and I know yours was after mine. So it was really painful today but, I think, necessary. I wish I had reported him sooner to the police.
I knew he belonged behind bars for the safety of all women should they come in contact with him in an isolated setting, isolated from those who could protect them from, him isolated from those who now so easily claim they never saw that kind of behavior of the defendant.
Of course, there are many cowards who can claim they just never saw him rape anyone. Yeah, that’s generally not how sexual assault or rape works. We know that. For those of you living under a rock who might have publicly stated before this trial they hoped he’d be found innocent, let me state this: I read that, and my own daughters could read that too.
I have three daughters, but I wonder if Danny’s co-star knows that Danny Masterson had my nine-year-old daughter’s name put on an NDA and stated it forbid her to disclose anything to do with Danny or raping or assaulting her mother, me.
Yes, it was my child’s name on it, and it includes her as a party and requires her not to disclose. The reason she knew about what this monster did to her mom was the monster himself arranged for the son of one of his friends, one of his homies, one of my daughter’s classmantes to tell my daughter, to tell her, to shame her and say her mommy was a liar and Danny didn’t rape her mommy.
I still remember the day I picked her up from school and from the back seat my child asked, “Mommy, what is rape?” She was nine years old. I mentioned that in my letter to the IJC.
In September 2004, Danny had his attorney, Marty Singer, threatened me with what my daughter would read in the rag magazines at the grocery store line should I back out of signing the NDA that afternoon. How do I know it was Danny who arranged for my daughter to hear that the rape? Well, Danny came to the meeting with Kirsten from Scientology, and he opened up with admitting that what he did with my kid was just taking it too far and that the church had him put money in my daughter’s name to receive Scientology counseling to help her with her emotional upset.
I refused. He smiled when he explained that he bought the little boy’s entire box of fundraiser candy bars in exchange for that message being delivered to my child. That was like a hundred dollars.
It wasn’t easy, every step of the most recent police investigation into the crime of the past seven years. It’s been filled with attempts to silence us all, to intimidate us and even obstruct.
Danny had his attorney, Marty Singer, let me know I was in serious breach of the NDA that I was forced to enter in 20 years ago. The NDA explicity stated it had to do with rape and assault.
Not just an NDA — and all of the steps I must take to make sure Danny and his team knew if law enforcement ever came sniffing around this whole crime or if I intended to initiatte recontact and I was to send a certified letter to an address to Marty Singer.
Well, I’m here today to say I did not govern myself accordingly. I went to law enforcement. I did not notify you. I have no regrets.
And about that NDA, the same man who had my nine-year-old daughter included by her full name in a rape cover-up NDA didn’t have the nerve to use his own name. Danny used an alias, “David Duncan,” a true coward and heartless monster.
Testifying in court was not easy. From day one of his appearance in September 2020, he packed the halls with his neighbors and so manyof the people who covered for him.
There was a South African man who assaulted me when I was a teen training in Scientology headquarters in Florida. He came to court despite my protest, and he was aware of him. And he did what he could to intimidate and harass me.
There was the defendant’s sister in the bathroom. When I had my panic attack on the stand and I ran to the bathroom with my C.A. advocate Rosario, she was in the bathroom, but we didn’t see her feet. The room was cleared for jurors, we thought.
I pressed my face against the tiles, and I screamed into the corner of that bathroom into the white tiles, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t do this.” I started splashing water on my face. It was pouring down my face and my hair.
And then I see one black loafer and a second come down, and the door opens. And I recognized the girl smiling at me, and Rosario looked at her and said “We have to leave” and pushed me into the hallway. Because she didn’t have the space, or grace to give me that space. With my face wet, my hair disheveled, that’s where I went.
I don’t know if this is a game to them, but this is a real court. This is not the Celebrity Centre.
I just really, I’m about to share something, and I’m really hoping you can read it. It’s the last bit to describe. I’m just not sure I want to say it out loud. I’m so sorry. OK.
The first couple of years post the attack and rape were really dark. I lost everything pretty much that I knew. I lost my religion. I lost the ability to be in contact with almost every person I had known or loved my entire life because I was deemed an enemy to the group having been declared by Scientology for reporting the rape to the LAPD.
I was given one concession. I was able to remain in contact with my parents in consideration for the millions they donated to Scientology. I had to find an apartment with little to no references. I didn’t exist outside of the Scientology world.
I had to find employment outside of the Scientology dominated industry that I worked with, my parents’ business. I worked three jobs, sometimes four at a time. I had to start my life all over at 29. And the ugly truth is, I didn’t want to live. And it seemed the world I knew didn’t want me to live.
I remember crying myself to sleep and wishing I could not wake up. That was the first time. For most of ’05 and ’06, it was a regular occurrence. I had extreme suicide ideation but too much love and concern for my daughter and parents to hurt them that way; or else I wouuld have done it, I think.
I would sob in my bed alone in my apartment and even started to pray to God, which I had never done in my life, and beg, if you are real, please don’t let me wake up. I would bawl and let the tears roll down my face and soak the pillow for hours sometimes and pass out into a deep sleep only to wake up hours sometime later, disappointed.
I really thought it would solve all the problems for everyone and my daughter could have her friends and school and life back should I pass.
I’m here to say that I overcame that, and I hope anyone who ever feels that way knows they can get help and that things do get better.
While I have not suffered from that for over 15 years, I carry other scars and I may or may not ever really get over them.
I spent the last 20 years with a super extreme fear of the dark. It can be so much of a social handicap and issue for others around me. I need a night light. I prefer all of the lights on in the house if give my druthers.
If the lights are out and I can’t see a light or a guiding light, I can wake up very disoriented. If there is no light in the room I fall asleep in, I can wake up in either fight mode or flight mode if my husband should accidentally roll over or touch me.
He knows I sometimes hide in the closet. He has to repeat, “It’s me, it’s me.” He can see my eyes when it registers finally and calm down. I can’t believe I’m saying and sharing these things, but they are what I believe needs to be considered about the true or sometimes hidden effects of forcible rapes.
These are not weekly or even regular occurrences where I hide in the closet or get disoriented, but even the dozen-plus my husband has to deal with these past many years, it’s too many.
I have another issue, and I also can’t believe I’m going to share. I just want to normalize. I can get so disoriented in this state that I will urinate in the corner of the room. I can’t shower in peace. That’s a bad place.
The shower is a place, my husband knows better than to even come into the bathroom when I shower. So he frequently draws me baths in the claw tub where I’m not triggered as it bears no resemblance to the bathroom that night. I would compare it to pool spooks, if that helps anyone understand what it’s like.
I wish I could shower with my husban, but that will likely never happen. I have panic attacks that can trigger my breathing that can become so shallow I can’t seem to get air. My husband knows to get cold on my face in the way of freezing water or cold night air if it’s not too extreme.
I have screamed out the windows of our bedroom in the middle of the night in tears, “I’m not OK, I’m not OK,” sobbing uncontrollably. I don’t even know what the neighbors think.
I have medicine that can get ahead of one of these if I take it at the early on start. My husband knows what to look for, as does my service dog.
I was once a very outgoing, trusting person. I have trust issues that are so extreme, it poses real challenges just in this investigation and the trust I needed to reach deep down and find.
I still remember one call with DDA Mueller where I will forever be ashamed of not trusting him. He was truly one of the most honorable men I have ever met. I’m sorry.
I had a list of more to share, but I don’t think I’m required to rip my soul completely open to illustrate just how much the actions of the defendant can both nearly end a life or destroy so many aspects of one’s life. And we who do survive to fight back are left shattered in a billion pieces.
I would like to, I would like to thank people who made this possible. I won’t be able to, but I wanted to say thank you to Leah Remini for lending me her full support, giving me safe passag to and from the halls.
There is so much more I won’t begin to tell everybody. I wanted to say that safe passage in something like this, and I really hope our advocates, who work in the courts, can get more support maybe and resources because it can be harrowing out there. Actually, sometiems in here.
And I had quit, I like to think I’m a fighter, but I had quit. In 2016, I think I had given up hope. Then Jane Doe 3 tweeted my name, said something and we spoke. And she got me back in the fight because there was another one.
I’d only ever heard of her. My mother has written about her in 2004, and I have a copy of that report. So to anyone who dares to say anything about this woman and what she’s shared, they can come up to me and get a copy of this report. And it is also forensically researched.
And my mother, a Scientologist in good standing, talks about Brie laughing at her being sodomized by him when she was passed out drunk. That’s January 2004.
So, sorry, Leah is not behind this.
In closing, I decided not to share my mother’s letter. I really wish I could, but I’m just, it’s not a good idea.
All I would like to say about it is, I wish I could do this. I can’t do this.
In closing, on sentencing I just wanted to say one thing. I lost my family. Our lives were destroyed. He took lives. But there is something thta I think is really telling, and I agree with him as to the sentence he should face.
This is a report written by Daniel Masterson, signed, dated December 9th, 2003. In closing after he describes what he did to me that night and complained that the condoms were becoming dry, he closed with “Rape, which I am being accused of, is a felony in the State of California and in the United States, punishable for up a life sentence in prison. Ruth is claiming in this report, being CC’d to over a dozen people, that I have committed a felony.”
The defendant has been convicted by a jury of his peers. I think I agree with him that life is an appropriate sentence.
Thank you. That’s it.”
I will have more another article soon on Masterson’s character reference letters.
Previous coverage:
Sept. 8: Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis wrote support letters for Danny Masterson at rape sentencing
Sept. 7: Danny Masterson sentenced to 30 years in prison for rape as victims denounce Scientology
June 8: Danny Masterson's ex-lawyers sanctioned for leaking rape case discovery to Scientology
May 31: Jury convicts actor and Scientologist Danny Masterson of raping two women in 2003
May 4: Ex-Scientologist's 'brouhaha' with priest leads to jury restrictions in Danny Masterson's retrial
April 25: Actor Danny Masterson’s rape retrial opens as prosecutor implicates Church of Scientology
First trial
Nov. 15: As Defense Fumes at Focus on Scientology, Prosecutor Calls That ’70s Show Star Danny Masterson ‘a Rapist’ During Closing Arguments
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